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Sunday, August 7, 2011

We'll be back!

Dear Friends,

We wanted to let you know why you won’t be hearing from us too much (if at all) for the next three months.

We are heading out to Otego, New York, for a stay with the nuns of Holy Myrrhbearers Orthodox Monastery. This experience will be a time of preparation for Sr. Celeste as she prepares for her life profession on November 20th of this year, and it will also be an opportunity for all three of us to learn from an established Eastern monastery. We are grateful to the nuns for enthusiastically welcoming us into their home and community life for these three months!

We are also grateful to those who have offered to work on projects around the monastery and grounds throughout this time that we are gone. We know that the monastery is in good hands!

We are sad that we will not be able to be present to the pilgrims at the annual eparchial pilgrimage at the Shrine of Our Lady of Mariapoch (Aug. 13-14) right across the street from the monastery, but God has chosen this time for us to spend with Him and to learn more about the monastic life. He is asking us to trust Him in an even deeper way—to let go and trust that He is taking care of everything. We hope that this time will help us to become better nuns so that when we return we will be better able to love you, to be a witness to you and to uphold the Church in prayer.

As we leave, we are carrying all of you and your needs with us, even if we do not know you. We believe that this time away will help us to draw even closer to you and to the whole Church as we intensify our prayer life, draw closer to Christ and unite our daily work with your efforts and struggles.

We are asking for your prayers also. We rely on the prayers of the people of the Church so that we can continue to be open to God’s will and faithful to Him, especially when difficult challenges arise. Thank you and God bless you!

Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery is part of the Orthodox Church of America (OCA), and their website is www.holymyrrhbearers.com.

O Women, * be the heralds of good news and tell what you saw; * tell of the vision and say to Sion: * "Accept the good news of joy from us, * the news that Christ has risen." *Exult and celebrate * and rejoice, O Jerusalem, * seeing Christ the King coming from the tomb * like a bridegroom."

"The monastery is the prophetic place where creation becomes praise of God and the precept of concretely lived charity becomes the ideal of human coexistence; it is where the human being seeks God without limitation or impediment, becoming a reference point for all people, bearing them in his heart and helping them to seek God."Pope John Paul II, Orientale Lumen (Light of the East)